Amy Sueyoshi has come out with her first book! For those of you who don't know her, She is a faculty member jointly appointed in Race and Resistance Studies and Sexuality Studies at San Francisco State University. Amy is a historian by training and her specialties lie in Asian America, gender, and sexuality. Check out Queer Compulsions, a true story of Asian American love, deceit, betrayal at the turn of the century. She would love to come to your event and class to talk about the book.






Queer Compulsions
Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi
Amy Sueyoshi
While confessing his love to fellow writer Charles Warren Stoddard, Yone Noguchi (1875–1947) had a child (future sculptor Isamu Noguchi) with his editor, Léonie Gilmour; became engaged to Washington Post reporter Ethel Armes; and upon his return to Japan married Matsu Takeda—all within a span of seven years. According to Amy Sueyoshi, Noguchi was not a dedicated polyamorist: He deliberately deceived the three women, to whom he either pretended or promised marriage while already married. Sueyoshi argues further that Noguchi’s intimacies point to little-known realities of race and sexuality in turn-of-the-century America and illuminate how Asian immigrants negotiated America’s literary and arts community. As Noguchi maneuvered through cultural and linguistic differences, his affairs additionally assert how Japanese in America could forge romantic fulfillment during a period historians describe as one of extreme sexual deprivation and discrimination for Asians, particularly in California.